I can't seem to find any official documentation on /etc/shadow syntax. Searching google I find loads of conflicting explantions of the meaning of x,!,!!,* in the password field.
man 5 shadow only says: The password field must be filled. The encryped password consists of 13 to 24 characters from the 64 character alphabet a thru z, A thru Z, 0 thru 9, interpreted. At this point i'm getting pretty frustrated search for documentation. So what is it? And how did you find out? -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list